Question

1440 saplings were collected by the students of a class for planting on the World Environment Day. The saplings were to be planted in rows and columns such that the number of rows was equal to the number of columns. Find the number of rows if there was a shortfall of 4 saplings.

(kindly show the written solution.​

Answer 1

Let the number of rows be x. Then the number of columns will also be x since the problem states that the number of rows is equal to the number of columns.

We know that the total number of saplings collected is 1440. Therefore, the total number of saplings planted will be:

x * x = x^2

However, there was a shortfall of 4 saplings, which means that only 1440 - 4 = 1436 saplings were actually planted. Therefore, we can write:

x^2 = 1436

To solve for x, we take the square root of both sides:

x = sqrt(1436)

Using a calculator, we get:

x ≈ 37.9

Since x must be a whole number (the number of rows and columns cannot be a decimal), we round x down to the nearest integer to get:

x = 37

Therefore, there were 37 rows of saplings planted by the students.